Conflict Theorists pretend to be Mistake Theorists

post by Chris_Leong · 2018-01-28T12:06:31.307Z · LW · GW · 23 comments

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Scott's recent post on Conflict Theory vs Mistake Theory is probably his most important post in quite a while. As Less Wrongers tend to be Mistake Theorists, they tend to try to see others through the lens of Mistake Theory. And a lot of value can be derived from this. Even when someone seems to be merely pursuing their own interests, there usually are at least some arguments as to why they are actually acting for the common good. Yet some people are Conflict Theorists and denying this reality is simply not rational.

Before I continue any further, I need to make a distinction between Total War Conflict Theory and Proportional War Conflict Theory. Those who practise Total War have very weak inhibitions against using underhand or vicious tactics against their enemies. I don't mean they have no limits - many people set a limit at serious physical violence - but they certanly don't wait for their enemies to shoot first. On the other hand, those who practise Proportional War still have a strong respect for ethical standards of behaviour. They recognise that they are in a war and that winning a war has a cost, but they try to hold onto as much morality as they can, knowing how easy it is to slowly slide down the slippery slope. In those post, when I talk about Conflict Theorists, I'll actually be using it as shorthand for Total War Conflict Theorists. I just wanted to clarify this before I started.

Anyway, one key point that Scott didn't mention is that many Conflict Theorists will try as hard as possible to convince everyone that they are Mistake Theorists. You see, if they admit that they are merely ideological warriors for their side and that they aren't really open to discussion or debate, many people would choose not to talk to them or to listen to them. So Conflict Theorists will pretend to debate in good faith, but if they aren't winning they will simply switch to attacking your character instead. Of course, they don't want to admit that they are Conflict Theorists, so the standard pattern for doing that is to present you as an unreasonable, ideological warrior who is in denial about obvious truths. The benefits of this strategy are to deny the enemy views airtime, to indicate to allies that considering these views would be a betrayal and to bully moderates into being silent.

Another common strategy is the use of ideological superweapons, where you make Conflict Theory moves like denouncing your opponent, while maintaining plausible deniability that you are actually making a Mistake Theory move. If you can denounce your opponent as falling into X-ism you can damage their credibility without exposing yourself to being called out, as long as you can create some intellectual justification for your claim. The reason why this works so well, is because at least some percentage of people actually are merely making an intellectual criticism and not actually trying to poison the well.

Conflict theorists will often build up a body of theory in order to justify their positions. This ensures that they will always have something to say in an argument so that they will never have to admit that they are wrong or look silly by not having a response. If they can obtain enough support from within the academy, then they can paint people who disagree with them as uneducated or arrogant for thinking they know better than the experts.

This body of theory will appear hugely flawed to anyone with any common sense. While Conflict Theorists may have intellectual standards, their standards are probably more at the level of, "Wouldn't be embarassed arguing that" vs "Actually trying to find the truth and question my biases". Conflict Theorists are simply going to be far too tempted to (not so) occasionally bend logic to get the conclusion that they want. Even if you don't want to do it personally, someone else will, and it is their work that will by promoted and shared. Holes can be covered by generating more theory, and any holes in this further theory can be covered by still more theory. Public conversations tend to be rather shallow, so this should be sufficient to maintain the illusion, especially if you have social power to discourage people from challenging you.

Eventually, they can recruit from the crowd who want to be seen as smart, but who aren't actually smart, and so who benefit from accepting the group's ideology in return for being given a bunch of long words and pre-packaged arguments (not to mention the pats on the back from other people who have bought into the deal). Of course, recruiting this crowd means maintaining the cover of intellectual respectability by pretending that actual serious research is going on and that your field isn't actually waging ideological war.

As we've seen, there are many benefits for Conflict Theorists who can convince others that they are Mistake Theorists. This means that it is always a challenge to try to tell the two apart.

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